Fresno Council Votes to Spend $1 Million of Taxpayer Money on Immigration Legal Defense Fund
The Fresno City Council voted 5-1 on Thursday to allocate $1 million of taxpayer money to re-establish the city’s Immigration Legal Defense Fund, a program that provides legal representation for city residents facing federal immigration enforcement.
Councilmember Miguel Arias, who sponsored the measure, said the fund addresses what he describes as increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in recent weeks. “We’ve seen in these recent ICE raids, citizens and legal immigrants have also been picked up and victimized, including those who are undocumented,” Arias said. “They have a right to due process. The defense fund is designed to help residents’ constitutional rights that have been violated by ICE.”
The money will come from salary savings generated by keeping vacant city positions unfilled, according to city officials. The program will be administered through the Fresno city attorney’s office, with the council determining how the money is distributed.
The fund applies only to Fresno residents with no criminal convictions. The council added that eligibility restriction through an amendment before the vote.
Seventeen speakers urged the council to approve the measure, including Sukaina Hussain, deputy executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. “There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court,” Hussain said. “That means when a Fresno resident is detained, they can be facing deportation in just a couple days with no one in their corner.”
Two residents spoke against the proposal. Niel O’Brien argued that taxpayer dollars should not be used to benefit a single group of residents. “If the real concern is due process when government acts badly, the answer is simple — make the fund available to any Fresno resident harmed by government or political abuse,” O’Brien said.
Arias defended the fund by comparing it to legal assistance the city provides in eviction cases. “Eviction is a civil matter. Immigration is a civil matter,” Arias said. “We have invested more than $6 million representing those who are legally evicted who are residents of Fresno. This is no different.”
Mayor Jerry Dyer has the authority to veto the measure. Dyer previously described the proposal as premature and said he tries not to duplicate what other government entities or nonprofits already provide. “I try not to replicate or duplicate what other government entities are doing, like the county, the state or the feds, or nonprofits,” Dyer said.
The city previously funded immigration legal defense efforts. In 2022, Fresno spent $200,000 of taxpayer money on 18 immigration cases — eight remain open, and 10 were completed successfully.
In 2023, the city spent $100,000 on 17 cases — sixteen remain open, and one was completed successfully. In 2025, the city budgeted $100,000 for the program but instructed legal staff not to open any new cases.
The city attorney’s office said many cases remain unresolved because outside legal counsel is still awaiting documents, cases remain pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or hearings are scheduled years into the future.
Councilmember Nick Richardson cast the lone “no” vote. Council Vice President Tyler Maxwell was absent. Councilmember Mike Karbassi, who voted against the 2021 version of the fund, voted in favor Thursday after successfully moving the eligibility restriction onto the consent agenda.
State Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria joined demonstrators outside City Hall following her announcement of $3 million for Central Valley community organizations that support immigrant families. “We’re saying ICE out. We want them to stop doing what they’re doing. They are racially profiling people regardless of if they are citizens or not. And our families are scared,” Soria said.
The Breakdown
- The Fresno City Council voted 5-1 to allocate $1 million of taxpayer money to re-establish the city’s Immigration Legal Defense Fund.
- The money comes from salary savings generated by keeping vacant city positions unfilled.
- The fund provides legal representation for Fresno residents facing federal immigration enforcement — but only for those with no criminal convictions.
- The program will be administered through the city attorney’s office, with the council determining how the money is distributed.
- Mayor Jerry Dyer has the authority to veto the measure and previously described it as premature.
- In 2022, the city spent $200,000 of taxpayer money on 18 immigration cases — eight remain open, 10 were completed successfully. In 2023, the city spent $100,000 on 17 cases — sixteen remain open, one was completed successfully.
What This Means for You
The Fresno City Council’s 5-1 vote allocated $1 million from the general fund — money that comes from taxpayers — to re-establish legal defense for residents facing federal immigration enforcement. Five councilmembers voted to direct public money toward legal defense for one category of residents, while one councilmember voted against it and the mayor has signaled he may veto.
Whether you see this as the right use of taxpayer money — protecting residents’ constitutional rights to due process in immigration proceedings — or the wrong one — depends on whether you believe the comparison to the city’s $6 million investment in eviction defense justifies this separate fund.
What You Can Do
If Mayor Dyer vetoes this measure, the council can override the veto with a supermajority vote. You can contact the mayor’s office or your city councilmember to weigh in on whether the fund should stand or be reconsidered.
What to Watch
In 2022 and 2023 combined, the city spent $300,000 of taxpayer money on 35 immigration cases. Of those, 24 remain unresolved — some because outside counsel is still waiting for documents, some pending with federal agencies, some with hearings scheduled years out. Only 11 cases were completed successfully.
That is a 31% completion rate after years of spending. The sources do not state what “completed successfully” means — whether it means a person avoided deportation, received legal status, or something else.
The $1 million allocation is five times the 2021 allocation. The sources do not state what accountability measures, if any, the council attached to this spending. A voter weighing the council’s judgment on this allocation should ask: what does “success” actually mean, how many cases will this money fund, and how will the public know whether it worked?
The sources do not state which outside attorneys or law firms the city will contract with to provide the legal defense, or whether those contracts will go through a competitive bidding process. The city attorney’s office will administer the fund, but the sources do not state whether the office itself will handle cases or pay outside counsel, or what the hourly rates or total contract amounts will be.
The sources do not state what happens to the vacant city positions whose unfilled salaries are funding this program — whether those positions are being eliminated or simply kept vacant while the city’s staffing needs go unmet. Councilmember Arias compared this fund to the city’s $6 million investment in eviction defense, but the sources do not state whether that $6 million comes from salary savings or a dedicated budget line.
